The Real Reason There’s No PS4 EA Access

The early Madden 18 release date is this week for the Xbox One, leaving many gamers asking where the PS4 EA Access support is so they can play Madden 18 five days early. We’ll see the same set of questions with the early FIFA 18 trial, and the answer is the same. You’re out of luck. This is because there is no PS4 EA Access subscription service available to gamers on Sony’s platform.

EA Access is a subscription service that includes access to a vault of up to a dozen games including popular titles like Madden 17, FIFA 17, UFC, Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1, Star Wars: Battlefront and other titles.

This service also includes early access to almost every EA game of the year with five days of early play. This includes full access to the game for up to 10 hours of play for FIFA 18 and Madden 18. When subscribers buy a digital version of the game or any in-game purchases there is a 10% discount.

We’ve heard rumblings of a PS4 EA Access release for the past few years, but in an interview EA’s COO Peter Moore pours cold water on the idea — at least from EA’s standpoint.

PS4 EA Access isn’t something EA is concerned about after Sony badmouthed the service last year.

The service is $5 a month or $29.99 a year and is only available on the Xbox One at this time. In an interview with GameSpot Moore responds to a question about PS4 EA Access bluntly saying, “Doesn’t Matter.”

Moore goes on to explain that customers are happy with the service explaining;

It’s on Xbox One, and those customers love it. We have analytics on everything these days, and subscriber satisfaction rates are through the roof. EA Access customers get to play more, because of the Vault, they get to play early, ahead of general release date, and they get to pay less because of the discounts it offers.

When the interviewer pushes for an answer about exclusivity on the Xbox One keeping PS4 EA Access from coming to gamers, Moore suggests looking at Sony’s earlier statement on the matter. In July 2014 a Sony representative told Game Informer,

“We evaluated the EA Access subscription offering and decided that it does not bring the kind of value PlayStation customers have come to expect,” adding, “We don’t think asking our fans to pay an additional $5 a month for this EA-specific program represents good value to the PlayStation gamer.”

With this recent exchange and the focus on renting games through PS Now, it looks like Sony is the reason that PS4 gamers cannot play Madden 16 and FIFA 16 early or subscribe to a library of EA games for a small monthly fee.

On Twitter we still see gamers asking about EA Access on PS4, but Sony has yet to respond.

Why doesn't ea have ea Access on PS4? I'm just confused lol…that's a whole other console…with MILLIONS of users

Madden 18 Graphics Upgrades

You can count on Madden 18 graphics upgrades thanks to the switch to the Frostbite engine. EA switched FIFA to Frostbite last year and this year it's time to upgrade Madden.

We get to see game engine footage in the Madden 18 teaser trailer below, but we don't see any head to head gameplay that reveal the changes you will see when you play.

The Madden 18 graphics upgrades we know about include better-looking stadiums inside and out. With Frostbite we will see city skylines and stadium exteriors. EA promises that you can, "watch the spectacle of NFL game day come to life in our most photorealistic game to date." Frostbite can deliver better-looking player faces as well. This is one of the places where FIFA upgrades were most noticeable.

EA promises more to come, but specifically, calls out the fireworks that you see in the video above, player runouts and "stunning" weather elements. Frostbite delivers impressive weather in Battlefield 1, and we hope that this means we will see more realistic weather elements in Madden 18.

Marky360

John Thomas

08/18/2015 at 3:58 pm

Hmm, so you mean when I bought EA Access for $30 for a year, then sold back Madden 25, Fifa 14, Fifa 15, Battlefield 4, and Titanfall for ~$100 and then also got Dragon Age Inquisition and Need for Speed Rivals for free. So I made $70 and got 2 games I didn’t have before. Sure seems like a terrible deal to me.

dave

08/16/2015 at 7:33 pm

EA Access is a a great value. especially if you you buy a lot of DLC, duh. How could it not be a great value? And what kind of stupid comment was that from Sony? “We don’t think asking our fans to pay an additional $5 a month for this EA-specific program represents good value to the PlayStation gamer.” you dont have to subscribe, ITS OPTIONAL dummies! My Cable provider doesnt just add HBO on to my channel lineup. Im not sure how anyone could be happy using a playstation, but why not make EA Access available to those living in misery

Chris Phillips

08/17/2015 at 1:14 pm

No, the REAL reason EA Access is on the Xbox One and not the PS4 yet, is because EA is using the “Friend Share” features that were made for the Online DRMed Xbox One. An exciting part of the online DRMed Xbox One was a feature called “Friend Share”. This feature would let any 10 selected friends play or “borrow” the full version of any game you owned for a pre-selected amount of time, set by the games publisher. After your time had expired, you would have to buy the game to continue playing. Sound familiar yet? This is the same system used to give all EA Access members, timed or unlimited access to selected EA games.

Sony does not have a system in place to manage digital rights to this extent in the PS4, nor do they want to pay to develop those themselves.

@Chris Phillips is totally right i own bot consoles since day one, and EA acces offer great value if you into sports game . i would be cool to get this app on ps4, but like sony say’s the ps4 is just a console who can read blu ray , where Ms say’s the xbox one is a console but it can do many other things too. both went totally in the opposite direction they were on last gen , where ps3 was more media center device than xbox , ( even is xbox had more apps etc.. ) this time is the opposite.. and i share Ms views on this, because it doesnt make the xbox one a bad console, look at this second semester, ( like all second semester since release of both console ) nearly 0 real boxed exclusive on PS4 , ( yup until dawn and uncharted trilogy ( a ps3 port again ) where on xbox we will have rare replay, forza 6, fable legends, gigantic, halo 5 , gears one remake + all the other gears in bonus ) and so on …

that’s why i play each year the first semester nearly exclusively on ps4 , for bloodborne , infamous last year … and the second one on xbox one …

Daniel Kendall

08/18/2015 at 4:45 pm

All the Xbox exclusives are still shitty or remakes and for now it’s just a pissing match between Sony and EA. No need for an Xbox I’ll wait a few days for madden. Any other ea title is rubbish anyways.

StI’ll have a few fan boys left though. I go for whatever system has the best value and games. Had 3 360s and 3 ps3s but only have 2 ps4s. No need for a one yet

jim jones

Sony Sucks

08/31/2017 at 1:41 am

Playstation 4 Fans are all rich snobs who like to judge other people. Xbox is the cheap and better alternative than the PS4, The PS4 has more useless gimmicks than the Xbox One, and the Xbox One X is the most powerful console on the market… It may be way more expensive than the PS4 Pro but it also has by far more power than the PS4 Pro. ALSO, Sony and Playstation didn’t want to participate in cross-multiplayer on minecraft, cause they stink. Rich Or Not, Snob or Not, Xbox is better. Microsoft and Bill Gates has donated and done alot of good things for the world, Sony just makes TV’s and overprices their consoles. Have a good day losers, Im gonna play some EA Access games on my Xbox One S